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Lisa's |
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Seeing is believing, so I’m told.
I don’t wear my prescription eyeglasses as I should.
Perhaps that explains my moderate degree of general skepticism.
It’s as good a reason as any other I can think of at the moment, so
I’ll stick to the silly notion for now. The burden of requiring eyeglasses fell upon me when I
could no longer read, or even see, my fifth grade teacher’s handwriting on the
blackboard. I convinced myself the
culprit was the sun’s glare; however, a few subsequent cloudy days squashed my
fabricated theory. Even from the
vantage point of the first row, it was all a distant blur. My newly existing condition was examined, diagnosed, and
remedied. One, two, three.
I held the cure that would put my squinting days to rest.
But not for long. My pair of
eyeglasses and I were no perfect pair. I
despised the mere thought of having to take them out of the ugly case that was
worn for shelter. If intense
squinting failed to get the job done of reading the blackboard, only then did
those glasses see the light of day. As the years marched on, I also required the corrective
lenses to watch movies clearly, and of course, learn to drive.
While at Department of Motor Vehicles, I was instructed to read the
letters on the eye chart. Forget about reading, I could barely see them.
And so, my little helpers were sprung from their place of residency.
With their assistance, I passed the test. Over the course of time, I’ve never gotten used to
wearing eyeglasses, although quite dependent upon them to see properly.
They haven’t been accepted as a part of who I am.
And to this day, they are mostly worn when absolutely
necessary…basically, by law. In other words, while driving my car. Engine on, glasses on. Engine
off, glasses off. I fussed with contact lenses for one year, while in my
twenties, as I figured I had the answer to my never-ending problem.
However, I realized that it was more of an inconvenience to see clearly
all the time than to simply wear the eyeglasses a small percentage of the time.
I’ve since freed myself from the dilemma of crawling on the bathroom
tiles, searching for that darn lens that slipped through my fingers and got
away. Instead, I can now spend
precious time handling some other minor disaster such as the accidental spilling
of an eight-ounce glass of grapefruit juice all over the kitchen floor. While I’m not at ease with the thought of ever wearing
eyeglasses all of the time, I’ve managed to build up a bearable tolerance for
wearing them some of the time. The
idea of laser surgery has crossed my mind once or twice, extremely quickly.
I don’t feel an urge to pursue the possibility in the near future,
maybe not ever. I’ve become comfortable with my routine.
Besides from operating an automobile, the choice to wear or not to wear
is entirely mine. On the rare occasions I turn on the television, I may or may
not reach for my glasses. So, I see
the screen blurry without them if I’m more than a few feet away.
It’s not as though I’m walking into trees, walls, or telephone poles.
Now and then I do encounter someone waving frantically at me, while
I’ve been known to squint and try to make a positive identification of the
fuzzy image in my view. I’ve
since learned to casually smile and wave instead, as the practice of squinting
may produce permanent wrinkles. During
each incident, I seem to walk away from the scene with the usual question I
notice dancing energetically in my mind. Who was that person, anyway?
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